10-12-2011, 04:10 PM

Hi all,

I've got an iPhone 4, running iOS 4.3.5, baseband 04.10.01.

This phone was jailbroken and I tried to upgrade it to iOS5, but got the error: "This phone [phone name] cannot be restored. An internal error occurred."

I then restored it to a clean 4.3.5 and tried the upgrade again. Same thing.

I've tried iTunes choose the firmware automatically, and also tried manually pointing it to the iOS5 .ipsw file (that it previously downloaded). No luck.

Any ideas?

//edit - iTunes is up to date: 10.5; OSX also has all updates installed.

10-12-2011, 04:15 PM

I'm also having this issue but my iPhone was NOT jailbroken. I attempted to restore it and now I have a black screen. Curse of Steve Jobs man...

10-12-2011, 04:28 PM

Lots of info here: The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An internal error has occured. - Page 4 - MacRumors Forums

Apparently Apple's servers are overloaded and you should try again later.

I tried like 20 times in a row, and it magically worked. It's updating now.

10-12-2011, 04:36 PM

Yup, update completed for me. Sweet!

10-12-2011, 04:39 PM

I got it but all my stuff is gone. The Backup was corrupted. I should've uploaded those baby photos...

10-12-2011, 09:08 PM

I experience the same problem. Should the operating system be 100% updated, or is it not the problem?

10-12-2011, 09:16 PM

Originally Posted by iPad

I'm also having this issue but my iPhone was NOT jailbroken. I attempted to restore it and now I have a black screen. Curse of Steve Jobs man...

Steve Jobs is dead. It's not his fault.

10-12-2011, 11:20 PM

Confirmed this worked for myself, hope it helps the rest of you. This came straight from Apple tech support. If you get the "Internal Error" message, it will be after you see the "backup" of your phone and the file will extract but then the error message will appear. **Please make sure you have everything backed up- this will erase everything on your iPhone. Eject, disconnect phone, do a "Hard Reset" by holding the HOME and LOCK buttons (about 20 seconds) until you see the White Apple logo on phone. WHen it restarts, you will be back at the screen showing to plug the phone into iTunes. You may also see another error (3200) but you should be able to hit "Restore" or a message will pop up from iTunes telling you the phone needs restored. This will run the update and the backup. You will then go through the prompts on the phone to set up iOS 5 and your Apps, contacts, settings should be back to where they need to be. Should the update fail, if you backed up correctly, you should then still be able to restore your phone back to the original state before you attempt this. iTunes will look for iOS 5 to install if you did indeed get the file downloaded before the Internal Error message. I went through this for my phone, then my wifes updated without any issue. Good Luck.

10-13-2011, 05:56 AM

OR you can simply wait and not risk everything that's important to you. I prefer waiting, given the risk involved.

*actually I was finally able to upgrade earlier this afternoon after several tries.